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From: DYOUNG@USC-ISID.ARPA (C. David Young)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: 80 columns - read this before you buy
Message-ID: <8511181344.AA24793@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 18-Nov-85 08:41:18 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8511181344.AA24793
Posted: Mon Nov 18 08:41:18 1985
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Terry,
You say that you have seen some of the 80 column simulations and that they
look pretty awful. I agree. But it is not so much due to the lack of
resolution available in graphics 8 as to the poor character sets these
authors have created. I have studied calligraphy and I think that as a
result the character set of OMNIVIEW is quite nice. And I know thousands
of customers that would agree. Of course there are certain letters like
'm' and 'w' which you can do nothing about. But then again, with a good
monitor there is no doubt what these characters are when you see them on
the screen. And I strongly disagree that a good monitor does not make any
difference. It makes all the difference in the world, especially when the
difference between 'm' and 'w' is only one pixel!

Besides all of this, I doubt very seriously that you will ever again see
any other 80 column hardware for the 8 bitters. Given the price of the
machines it is just not cost effective. And OMNIVIEW gives you so much
more than 80 columns! I just finished souping up the ramdisk handlers
in OMNIVIEW XL/XE to treat the extra RAM in our 256K upgrade for the 800XL
as a double sided single density drive. What a joy to have such a big
ramdisk!

David Young
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